A USA Today article titled Feds Rate U.S. Nursing Homes reveals that non-profit facilities fared better than for-profit ones, but that the overall quality of homes left a lot to be desired.
Nationally, 23 percent of the nursing homes rated achieved just a "one-star" ranking overall (out of five). The ratings site, Nursing Home Compare is administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Nearly 16,000 nursing homes are included on the rankings site, which focuses on facilities that are certified to participate in Medicare or Medicaid. Both for-profit and non-profit homes are ranked.
The ratings are based on data from:
- Health Inspections: There are three types of inspections including (1) "Comprehensive" whereby the nursing home health inspection process looks at all major aspects of care in a nursing home (about 180 different items); (2) Onsite visits whereby trained inspectors visit each nursing home to check on the quality of care, inspect medical records, and talk with residents about their care; (3) Federal Quality Checks whereby federal surveyors check on the state surveyors’ work to make sure they are following the national process and that any differences between states stay within reasonable bounds. The limitations are that there are some differences in how different states carry out the inspection process and there are also differences in state licensing requirements.
- Staffing: The quality ratings look at the overall number of staff compared to the number of residents and how many of the staff are trained nurses. The limitations here are that staffing data is self-reported by the nursing home, not collected and reported by an independent agency. Also, staffing data are reported just once a year and reflect staffing over a 2 week period of time so it's a snapshot.
- Quality Measures: These measures show how well the nursing home helps people keep their ability to dress and eat, or how well the nursing home prevents and treats skin ulcers. Limitations are that again, the quality measures are self-reported by the nursing home. Also, the quality measures represent only a few of the many aspects of care that may be important to a family.
When it comes to caregiving, it was not that surprising that non-profit facilities fared better than for-profit ones. We also see the same when it comes to for profit and not for profit hospice programs. The theory is that for profit entities often times limit care in order to make a larger profit but this is not always the case and believe me there are exceptions.
Anyway, in spite of the limitations of these rankings, they serve a very useful purpose as they give families and caregivers additional help in selecting appropriate nursing facilities for loved ones. I just wish there were more services like this for in-home care and assisted living which are much more popular today than nursing homes.
These ranking sites and the growing popularity of web 2.0 including blogs and social networking sites for caregivers and senior care suppliers are great for the industry because they can only raise the bar when it comes to care.
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